Famous

The river is famous to the fish.

The loud voice is famous to silence, 

which knew it would inherit the earth 

before anybody said so. 

The cat sleeping on the fence is famous to the birds 

watching him from the birdhouse. 

The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek. 

The idea you carry close to your bosom 

is famous to your bosom. 

The boot is famous to the earth, 

more famous than the dress shoe, 

which is famous only to floors. 

The bent photograph is famous to the one who carries it 

and not at all famous to the one who is pictured. 

I want to be famous to shuffling men 

who smile while crossing streets, 

sticky children in grocery lines, 

famous as the one who smiled back. 

I want to be famous in the way a pulley is famous, 

or a buttonhole, not because it did anything spectacular, 

but because it never forgot what it could do.

--Naomi Shihab Nye (1952- ), Ferguson born Palestinian-Amercan poet and author.

Ask Me

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say.


--William Stafford (1914-1993), American poet and teacher, pacifist, winner of the National Book Award and US Poet Laureate in 1970

"In Heaven"

In Heaven,
Some little blades of grass
Stood before God.
"What did you do?"
Then all save one of the little blades
Began eagerly to relate
The merits of their lives.
This one stayed a small way behind
Ashamed.
Presently God said:
"And what did you do?"
The little blade answered, "Oh my lord,
"Memory is bitter to me
"For if I did good deeds
"I know not of them."
Then God in all His splendor
Arose from His throne.
"Oh, best little blade of grass, " He said.

--Stephen Crane (1871-1900), in The Echoing Green: Poems of Fields, Meadows, and Grasses (2016)

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

--Wendell Berry (1934- ), from the essay "Poetry and Marriage" in Standing By Words (1983)